Why the Heck Does Magneto Have a Graviton Shield?

I'm a gamer at heart and recently one of the games that I've been enjoying recently has been Marvel: Avengers Alliance over on Facebook. Readers of the blog will know I'm a big comics fan and recently talked about the science in the Avengers film. So when I was playing this Facebook game and Magneto activated his "Graviton Shield" power I immediately thought one thing ...

Huh?

Magneto is a villain who mostly goes up against the X-Men. That wasn't the confusing part, though, because there are X-Men characters in the game and Magneto has clashed with the Avengers over the years. No, the part that made me go "Huh?" is that Magneto is the "Master of Magnetism" ... ?So why the heck does he have a Graviton Shield?

Gravitons are hypothetical gauge bosons that mediate the force of gravity. As described in the comics (or in The Physics of Superheroes) Magneto's power is the ability to manipulate magnetic energy. The gauge boson that mediates the electromagnetic force is the photon, so if he wields magnetic powers then it is the photon that he should be able to create a shield of, not the graviton. This means that he can do all sorts of great things when manipulating charged particles like electrons or protons.

But a graviton doesn't have any electrical charge at all. (Or, to be precise, it has an electrical charge of zero.) Not only should he not be generating gravitons, but he shouldn't even be able to affect them!

Of course, I suppose there could be something much deeper going on here. Under string theory, the most fundamental type of object wouldn't be an electron or a graviton, but instead a tiny vibrating string of energy. Is it possible that Magneto has developed the ability to get these strings to vibrate at different frequencies, changing from an electron into a graviton?

This does, however, seem to be a bit outside of Magneto's wheelhouse, more the sort of power that is normally wielded by Molecule Man, who (despite the name) is shown to be able to manipulate matter at its most fundamental levels.

So it looks like this is another case of comic book & video game science abuse. That is, unless any of you loyal readers have a suggestion for how Magneto could manipulate gravitons. Offer your theories in the comment section and let's see if we can reverse-engineer an explanation that makes sense!

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Dr. Higgs, Your Boson Is Here

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider announced yesterday that they may well have found the long-sought after Higgs boson, sometimes called the "God particle," which is the final missing part of the Standard Model of particle physics. Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs predicted the existence of the particle back in the 1960's, but he was so far ahead of the technology that it took nearly half a century to actually get the first glimpse of the thing ... except, of course, for the glimpses that are all around us, if Higgs is right.

Peter Higgs awaits word from CERN on the potential discovery of the Higgs boson
Source: CERN

Because if he is right, then evidence of the Higgs boson is everywhere. See, the reason Peter Higgs needed to propose his theory was that the physical theories he had to work with at the time had one major flaw: they didn't explain why there was any stuff in the universe.

That's right. The very best scientific explanations that physicists could come up with had a gaping hole in the middle of them. They depicted a universe that was so elegant and finely tuned that ... it shouldn't actually have anything in it. For example, the gauge bosons that mediate the weak nuclear force (called the W boson and Z boson) should, according to theory, have absolutely no mass. But they do have mass!?So Peter Higgs set out to try to explain why and how matter itself could exist, in a way that was fully consistent with all of the known laws of physics.

The result was to propose a field in empty space, a field that permeates all of space, called the Higgs field, which has the right properties needed to give mass to these particles ... and, in turn, to cause the mass of all the rest of the universe, as well.

And, in quantum physics, fields can also be expressed as particles (one of the many weird things about quantum physics), so the resulting particle was called the Higgs boson. (It was called a boson because it had a spin of 0. If it had a spin of one-half it would have been a Higgs fermion, but then it wouldn't have been able to do what it needed to do!)

As with most things in physics, that's an over-simplification of the story. It sounds like Higgs came up with the whole idea out of nowhere, and he didn't. The ideas were built on the work of others and many others came upon similar ideas at almost exactly the same time, so even calling the resulting fields and particles "Higgs" can be a controversial thing to do. Still, the fact is that he was a key player in creating the model which, over the last almost-fifty years, has been refined to explain how the symmetries of the universe are broken in the precise way that we need in order to get matter.

And that model may be about to be confirmed by experimental evidence!

Congrats to you, Peter Higgs ... and to all the other players in this drama that is theoretical physics!

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Physics on Twitter

Last week, I was honored to be listed among the top "must-follow" physicists on Twitter, as named by The Huffington Post's Science section. While this was quite an honor, it did strike me that I should be keeping such a list myself ... and so here it is now: our Top Physics Feeds on Twitter. I'm sure that this list will grow over time, but if you want to keep up on the list, then it's simple enough... just go to the @AboutPhysics list page and subscribe directly to the Twitter lists that I maintain there! As I add new physics resources on Twitter, you'll instantly have access to them.

Or, of course, feel free to check back on the article regularly to see who has been added.

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Kepler's Laws Rule the Worlds (that's right ... all of them)

Earlier this month, fans of science may have heard a lot of commotion about the transit of Venus. The transit of Venus describes an event that happens at most twice a century in which Venus passes directly in a path directly between the Earth and the Sun. When the moon does this, it's an eclipse. When Venus does it, it's the transit of Venus.

The commotion was mostly related to the rarity of the event and the fact that it was truly beautiful, for those who were able to witness it. (Remember, don't stare directly at the sun to observe any astronomical event.) If you missed it, then you can check out the transit of Venus images over at About.com Space. Comedian/faux political pundit Stephen Colbert nailed it when he identified the transit of Venus as:

"Truly one of the most majestic examples of something passing in front of something else."

But once upon a time, the transit of Venus carried some pretty heavy stakes. In 1769, nations around the world (well, okay, mostly Europe) sent expeditions to measure the time of the transit of Venus. Using these calculations, they were able to apply Kepler's laws of planetary motion to figure out the distance between the Earth and the Sun. By having a more precise measurement of this distance, it improved a navigator's ability to calculate longitude while at sea, which ultimately had benefits for warfare and trade. (Back then, it seems, funding pure scientific endeavors wasn't any more popular than it is now.)

The reason this works is that Kepler's laws govern the motion of planets orbiting the sun, defining the paths that these planets take and the rates at which they move. Kepler derived these values from careful observations maintained by his mentor, astronomer Tycho Brahe, over the course of his lifetime. So, in other words, Kepler knew that his laws applied to the motion of the planets, but he didn't have a firm theoretical explanation for why this was. It was later shown that Kepler's laws could be derived from Newton's law of gravity, developed nearly a century later in 1687, thus providing Kepler's laws with a theoretical framework as well as the empirical support of evidence. It is always nice to have both, after all.

Kepler's Second Law:
A line from the sun to each planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time.
Source: Wikipedia via GNU Free Documentation License

With these laws firmly in place, the only thing that remained was to make measurements of?the transit of Venus and then apply some angular calculations to figure out the resulting details about the solar system ... which is where the 1769 transit of Venus expeditions come in.

The adventure of three of the major expeditions is described in thrilling detail in Mark Anderson's recent book The Day the World Discovered the Sun. ?I've got to admit that I'm not necessarily the sort of guy who jumps at the chance to read travelogues of eighteenth century scientific expeditions ... but if you are, then it should definitely rank high on your reading list!

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Beyond the Higgs: The Other Bosons

With all the excitement about the Higgs boson, it seems like a good time to think about the other bosons that we know about. The Standard Model of particle physics contains a total of four bosons (not counting the theoretical Higgs). These bosons are considered force carriers, because they communicate the three fundamental forces of physics that are explained by quantum physics. The bosons associated with these three forces are:

There are four bosons because the W boson and Z boson work together to mediate the weak nuclear force.

In addition to the above bosons, theories of quantum gravity also propose another type of boson, the graviton, which would mediate the gravitational force. To date, however, this boson has not been confirmed.

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Book Review: Physics of the Future

In Physics of the Future, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku brings the knowledge he's gleaned from interviewing over 300 scientific experts in a diverse range of disciplines to explore the ways that new scientific discoveries will affect the next century of human civilization. The book is broken up in a very clear manner, exploring the near future, midcentury, and far future discoveries that will shape our world in the century to come.

Of course, Kaku himself makes it clear that these are only predictions, and he goes to great lengths to explain that those who have tried to make such predictions in the past are wrong more often than not.

Still, this is a great book from a master at presenting science to the general public, so should be of interest to any readers who want an idea about what to expect from science in the next century.

Read more in our full review of the book or, if you've already read the book, let us know what you thought about it in the Comments!

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Big Bang Theory - Season 5 Round-Up

With the conclusion of season 5 of The Big Bang Theory, we've got our reviews of the last couple of episodes up on the site now, along with links to the science-related subjects that get mentioned in the course of the geek-related comedy.

You can access all of our The Big Bang Theory season 5 reviews.

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